Marianna Crane

Category: nurse practitioner

I have written about gun control on December 16, 2012 and reblogged the post in December 14, 2013. Three years later, I’m rebloging it along with the editorial from the New York Times. I am committed to do as the NYT suggests: I will not vote for politicians who support gun laws that allow the people to “legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill with brutal speed and efficiency.”
May we Americans who care about the future of our children and grandchildren deliver the message to our elected officials that we will no longer tolerate the NRA’s influence.

This editorial published on A1 in the Dec. 5 edition of The New York Times. It is the first time an editorial has appeared on the front page since 1920.

The Opinion Pages | EDITORIAL

End the Gun Epidemic in America

It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD DEC. 4, 2015

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.
But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.
But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.
What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

When we were traveling in Ireland this past October, our Irish tour guide told us that Ireland did not have a “gun culture” as we did in the States. Never having heard that opinion expressed before, the term “gun culture” stayed in my head.

After the recent killings at an elementary school in Connecticut, I looked up the word “culture” in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, which reads in part: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations; the characteristic features of everyday existence shared by people in a place or time.

Charles M. Blow wrote in A Tragedy of Silence, New York Times, that public opinion is shifting away from gun control. In a recent Gallup poll 53 percent to 43 percent opposed the ban on semiautomic guns or assault rifles.

“Pardon me,” said the well-dressed older man. “But could you tell me when this festival got so big? Last time I was here, there were only a few tents. And today,” he paused, his smile wide, “this is huge, and so many people.”

I get excited already when I approach the street where it starts. There are several blocks full of tents with tables lined up on the sides of the streets. You hardly know where to start. Plus there are large outdoor tents and indoor venues for author presentations. When I’m…

My husband and I were on a tour. Our traveling buddies consisted of older folks like ourselves. The woman knew I was a retired NP and had told me she frequently saw either an NP or PA when she went for routine medical appointments. She was satisfied with either but didn’t know the difference.

I became an NP in the early 80s and worked in Chicago when NPs were trying to expand our practice by gaining prescription privileges. We were much maligned by the traditional medical establishment. “If nurses want to act like doctors, let them go to medical school” or something to that effect seemed to be the mantra of the American Medical Association. (Both the AMA and the Illinois Medical Association…

Share this:

Like this:

It seems fitting to re-post what I wrote last year after 20 children and six teachers were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Let us not forget. When we were traveling in Ireland this past October, our Irish tour guide told us that Ireland did not have a “gun culture” as … Continue reading GUN CULTURE

Share this:

Like this:

The first night in a hotel room in Estoril, Portugal, my heart, flipping about in my chest, jolted me awake. Thump. Thump. Thump. Silence. Then a rush of horses’ hooves clopped on my ribs. Trying to ignore my heart’s gymnastics, I tried to go back to sleep but the Mariachi band playing under my ribs … Continue reading GETTING ON THE BUS Part I of 2

Share this:

Like this:

The guy on the motorcycle looked like Jeff. My heart did a flip. His muscular arms jutting from his T-shirt were tan. Of course not like the arms of the guy I knew as Jeff. His were thin and weak. But I imagined this is what Jeff would have looked like before his accident. I … Continue reading HELLO BEAUTIFUL

Share this:

Like this:

Nurses Week starts tomorrow, May 6, which is known as National Nurses Day and ends on Florence Nightingale’s birthday, May 12th. While I feel nurses deserve appreciation for their work 365 days a year, who am I to disregard an opportunity to spotlight actual nurses and their contribution to health and healing. I have … Continue reading FINALLY SHARING OUR STORIES?

Share this:

Like this:

I hear my five-year old grandson laughing and think of the twenty first-graders killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. How safe will his school be next year? The National Rife Association suggestion of an armed guard in the hallway of each school doesn’t reassure me but persuades me all the more to do what … Continue reading ONE SMALL STEP

Share this:

Like this:

When we were traveling in Ireland this past October, our Irish tour guide told us that Ireland did not have a “gun culture” as we did in the States. Never having heard that opinion expressed before, the term “gun culture” stayed in my head. After the recent killings at an elementary school in Connecticut, I … Continue reading GUN CULTURE

Share this:

Like this:

It started out on a rainy day in January. Like the rest of overweight America, I had resurrected old New Year resolutions. I wandered into a branch of a not-to-be-identified weight loss program and approached a young lady sorting out pamphlets. After giving me the information I requested, she excitedly told me that I would … Continue reading Humor and Humility